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Banned
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willravel, while I agree that US healthcare can be unfavorably compared to what is available in France, a country with little foreign debt compared to GDP, almost no trade deficit, and 20 percent less poverty per thousand households, despite nearly a 10 percent unemployment rate, I am unable to separate the "healthcare gap" from the larger problem.....the disparity of wealth distribution in the US, compared to in other ODC's.
You might be able to separate the distribution of healthcare from the "big problem" because you don't seem to recognize that an $8000 euro per month household income (equivalent to $10750 US) is not "middle" income:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=21
......alrighty....who is "rich", then ???
2005 US Census data, based on income survey of 114,384 households.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/incomestats.html .....
.......18354 of 83931 of surveyed multi-persons households had income of $100,000 or more in 2005.....
I suspect that the number of households with income of $150,000 or more, is signifigantly less than 18354 households
....so now that the results of a 2005 US Census survey of income of 114,384 households supports that $80000 annual income for a single person, and $150,000 income for a multi-person household is "top tier", if you refuse to endorse tax increases for these high earners (compared to the incomes of the rest of us), and knowing that debt of the US treasury has increased by 3,000 billion in just five years, after a year with a small US treasury surplus, as recently as in 2001, would you advocate for elimination of federal inheritance taxes of the estates over $2 million.....and....who would you designate for tax increases. Consider that, for 25 years after WWII, the top marginal income tax rate was 90 percent, and now it is 30, and the top tax on capital gains has been reduced to just 15 percent....yet you seem to see no basis for rolling back recent tax increases?
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<b>IMO, to "do this" discussion in a more realistic way...where the healthcare distribution gap is but a symptom of the larger US wealth distribution problem (crisis....) you run up against the same reluctance that I experienced when I authored these two threads:</b>
My thread dealing with the background of the last true American populist politician, the assassinated Louisiana Senator and former governor, called one of the two "most dangerous men in America by Franklin Roosevelt, and, in his NY Times obituary, a "fascist", <b>Huey Long</b>, did not even garner one reply:
My thread about the re-emergence of the movie "Reds", on DVD, was immediately "modded out".... the TFP owner took it's length personally, I think......
The "Reds" thread contained this quote of Theodore Roosevelt:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...le#post2199695
.....Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
"If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln's. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the workingman hear his side.........
...At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will....
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<b>willravel, no one wants to talk about the REAL problem....you didn't post in the Huey Long thread....for example......so I'll reemphasize some of my previous sparsely received posts on the disparity problem and on the malignant greed and manipulation that preempts even the small government effort to insure seniors....medicare, and let it go at that.....</b>
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=108
Quote:
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Originally Posted by jorgelito
But "fair share" can be tricky to assess. It is subjective.
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how are these CIA "fact book" statistics, "subjective"?
Contrast the "share" of the bottom 10 percent, with that of the top ten percent, and the GINI index number, of the three above countries, with the data of the three countries, displayed below......
Can a politcal philosophy, or a politcal party, sustain itself by embracing the idea that the distribution of wealth in the US is fairer, or sounder for the politcal status quo, if it matches the arrangements in Mexico and Brazil, closer than those of Germany, Sweden, and Japan? Is the top ten percent in the US Mexico, and Japan, better off, from a security and politcal influence standpoint, goinf forward....than the top ten percent in Japan, Sweden, and Germany?
Are the lower class inhabitants of the US. Mexico,and Brazil, lazier, or less productive, than their counterparts in Sweden, Germany, and Japan.
Are the top ten percent in the US, Brazil, and Mexico, smarter, or more productive...or are they simply, and probably temoporarily, in possession of more politcal influence than their counterparts in Japan, Germany and Sweden?
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Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...30&postcount=8
flstf, according to the 2006 tax prep. IRS guidelines:
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p502/ar02.html
If you pay $6k annually out of pocket with net income dollars, and you make $40k per year, you can deduct the excess of 7-1/2 percent of your adjusted gross income. If you have a file your tax return with a family of 3 standard deduction, for simplicity's sake, I'll use a round number of a $30k adjusted gross, defined as adjusted by subtraction of $10k standard deduction.
$30k X 7.5 percent= $2250. $6000 medical insurance expense, less $2250 equals $3750 eligible for deduction from taxable adjusted gross income.
This adjustment, coupled with, for example, with $6000 of deductible mortgage interest, $2000 deductible property tax, $300 deductible vehicle tax, $500 deductible charitable donation expense, and your total deduction could then exceed the original $10,000 standard deduction,
$6000 + $3750 + $2000 + +500 + $300, and now your total deductions are $12,500 instead of the original $10,000 standard deduction.
Deductions for medical treatment co-pay expenses, prescription expenses, transportation expenses, tax preparation fees, originally ineligible because the $40k annual earner could not "beat" the $10k standard deduction, become eligible when the $3750 medical insurance premium deduction allows the taxpayer to exceed the original $10k standard deduction.
To sum it up, under the current taxation structure, the "little guy", with a modest income and deductions formerly too small to exceed the standard deduction, receives income tax reduction on a significant portion of his out of pocket medical premium expense.
The purpose of the "standard" deduction allowance is to simplify tax filing and the "standard" includes consideration of "average" deductions for a single or a couple with "X" number of child dependents and an average size mortgage interest and property tax deduction, or a renter with a similar income.
So, there is already an allowance for payment of some medical and medical insurance expenses factored into the standard deduction tax tables.
The status quo is that the tax system is progressive, but skewed in favor of those who earn income above $90k because SSI & Medi tax withholding stops there.
Recently I posted a table from the census.gov site that illustrated how few singles exceed an annual household income of $80K per year, and how few multi-person households exceed income of $150k.
If your income exceeds "average" or mean, the system is designed for you to pay a progressively higher tax than the lower 2/5 ths of tax filers earn.
Bush's "reform" would reverse that and shift some of the tax burden for financing universal insurance premiums, to those who already spend everything that they earn on necessities.
No one expects that employees who work for firms that offer above average pension, vacation, or holiday benefits, to suddenly pay a tax to subsidize those who work for less generous or prosperous employers. Many law enforcement personal are permitted to retire, with immediately redeemable taxpayer paid retirement benefits, after just 20 years of employment.
Should those favored employees pay a tax to subsidize those of us who must work until age 66 to qualify for pension benefits?
The wealthiest are experiencing the initial stages of a period when their percentage of total income taxes paid by all tax payers will shift to the tiers under their tier. Would it not be fairer to levy an excess profits tax or a markup "cap" on insurance company medical coverage premiums, or a higher capital gains tax on stockholder dividends and gains from stock sales in that industry? Should the "little guy" with most of his medical premiums provided as a company benefit, pay more, along with the modest income earner who shoulders is entire health insurance premium cost, because Bush's government failed to secure the borders or to enforce laws that prohibit illegal residency?
Should the average or below average income employee with a health insurance employment benefit, be taxed to pay the added cost built into health insurance premiums because the federal government refuses to fully reimburse county and municipal hospitals for providing care to elderly or welfare patients, or to the uninsured? The government and private policy holders are paying for all of the medical care, for everyone in the country, and they always have.
The Bush administration and congress have refused to put policies in place to manage how this care is dispensed, resulting in huge and avoidable expenses shifted to public hospitals who end up operating emergency rooms that are used as outpatient clinics of last resort by the indigent and the uninsured, and by expensive treatment actual emergencies that could have been diagnosed and treated much more cheaply if medical clinics were available to routinely diagnose and treat less severe ailments at a much earlier stage in the progression of an illness or disorder.
This official, intentional neglect is further aggravated by the abandonment of the inner cities by government. Increasingly unequal wealth distribution, ignorant and ineffective illegal drug distribution and abuse enforcement, economics driven segregation, and illegal immigration, and the elimination of living wage employment opportunities formerly available to inner city residents before the disappearance of the American industrial manufacturing base, along with the withdrawal of the will of the federal government to encourage or provide affordable housing and equal public education, results in higher incidence of homelessness and violence that ends up at the doorstep of already overburdened and under supported urban public hospitals.
Bush is proposing another wealth shift from the wealthiest to the rest of us, and it's bullshit.
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Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...06&postcount=1
This is looooonnnng....and I'm assuming that you already "know what you know". I am only excerpting a small portion of Russ Winter's eye opening article, in the second quote box that follows....
Read it if you're curious, or if you have an urge to double check what you "know".....
The wealthiest Americans have succeeded in lobbying elected officials for the lowering of their tax burden, since the 1960's from a top rate of 90 percent on the highest portion of their income to below 40 percent, today. They have succeeded in cutting the tax rate on their passive income, income derived from capital gains, to just 15 percent.
It is reported that some of the wealthiest US families:
Quote:
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2182
April 25, 2006
Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy Expose Stealth Campaign of Super-Wealthy to Repeal Federal Estate Tax
Report Identifies 18 Families Behind Multimillion-Dollar Deceptive Lobbying Campaign
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to repeal the federal estate tax has been aggressively led by 18 super-wealthy families, according to a report released today by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy at a press conference in Washington, D.C. <b>The report details for the first time the vast money, influence and deceptive marketing techniques behind the rhetoric in the campaign to repeal the tax.
It reveals how 18 families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed and coordinated a 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them a windfall of $71.6 billion.</b>
The report profiles the families and their businesses, which include the families behind Wal-Mart, Gallo wine, Campbell’s soup, and Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms. Collectively, the list includes the first- and third-largest privately held companies in the United States, the richest family in Alabama and the world’s largest retailer.
<b>These families have sought to keep their activities anonymous by using associations to represent them and by forming a massive coalition of business and trade associations dedicated to pushing for estate tax repeal.</b> The report details the groups they have hidden behind – the trade associations they have used, the lobbyists they have hired, and the anti-estate tax political action committees, 527s and organizations to which they have donated heavily.
In a massive public relations campaign, the families have also misled the country by giving the mistaken impression that the estate tax affects most Americans. In particular, they have used small businesses and family farms as poster children for repeal, saying that the estate tax destroys both of these groups. But just more than one-fourth of one percent of all estates will owe any estate taxes in 2006. And the American Farm Bureau, a member of the anti-estate tax coalition, was unable when asked by The New York Times to cite a single example of a family being forced to sell its farm because of estate tax liability.
“This report exposes one of the biggest con jobs in recent history,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. “This long-running, secretive campaign funded by some of the country’s wealthiest families has relied on deception to bamboozle the public not only about who must pay the estate tax, but about how repealing it will affect the country.”.......
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Quote:
http://wallstreetexaminer.com/blogs/...p=228#more-228
« Reflections on Christmas
FCB Prisoner’s Dilemma or Musical Chairs? »
Rebuttal of GaveKal’s Bully “Wealth & Platform Theory”
The latest in misconceived bullish theories to come down the pike was espoused in this week’s Barrons, by GaveKal. A centerpiece of their theory is the “net worth” of American “households”, derived from the Federal Reserve Z1 report. In 3Q, 2006 the Fed reported that US households held $67.1 trillion in assets against liabilities of $13.0 trillion, for a net worth of $54.1 trillion. GaveKal goes on to assure us that based on this supposed solid balance sheet, the US will have little difficulty with borrowing from these foreigners, and servicing trillion dollar plus annual twin deficits......
.....What GaveKal doesn’t get into at all is who holds all this fictitious American wealth? Readers of this blog already know the answer to that. It’s in the hands of plutocrats and the elite. Therefore for purposes of my counterpoint to the “bountiful wealth” theory, <b>I am just going to acknowledge from the get go that about 10% of American households are doing fabulously indeed, at least for the moment. The next 10% may be doing well, sort of, but increasingly that’s subject to debate. It’s the bottom 80% that I worry about and will focus on here.</b> Further I advance the following question: can the US economy stay solvent and strong by depending on transitory Bubble “wealth” and the income of the top 10%, especially as “platform companies” jettison the jobs of the other 90%?
Let’s jump right into who owns the $54 trillion. Most of the breakdown is based on the Fed’s clunky 2004 survey of consumer finances. You will also find more data and background to dig deeper from a series of better written papers that I’ve linked to. As this post is long and somewhat dense, impatient “get to the point” readers who don’t care to go deep, may wish to skip to the bullet points at the end. Then you can always come back to see what the fuss is about.....
........The next focus is on the Bottom 80% who hold $8.27 trillion, or less than 15.3% of total US net worth. These are the people whose jobs are being outsourced to GaveKal’s “platform companies”, to be rehired as low paid service sector poodle groomers and swimming pool cleaners for the elite, or just as commonly, elite wannabees. Yet this group accounts for 61.3% of US consumption. The US therefore can not depend on the Top 20% for its consumption, as wealth-spending elasticity is not as strong: 84.7% of total wealth equals only 38.7% of US consumption...........
........The bottom 80% owns 9.4% of all stock and mutual funds, but 34.6% of housing equity. That’s $938 billion in shares, and $7.08 trillion in housing equity (including land and farms). In the last three years stocks have nicely appreciated, but Bottom 80s have not been there to exploit it. The bottom 80s have much more, in fact just about everything, riding on the housing Bubble. Prices there are now much more problematic, especially for those buying high and late in the cycle and using leveraged exotic (or toxic, depending on your point of view) mortgages.........
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I am not concerned that there will be only a muted reaction when the bottom 80 percent of Americans "take the hit" in the real estate valuation implosion that is still only in it's infancy.
My concern is that there has not been and that there is no indication that there will be....a backlash by the masses in reaction to the uneven and still worsening....distribution of wealth statistics in the US. IMO, libertarians intend, if they achieve political power.....only to achieve even more drastic inequality in the distribution of wealth....their acquisition of political power may only be possible because of their intent to bring about a status quo that will favor the already drastically over favored...those who have bought the politcal representation away from the influence of the most of us.
Why have we let this happen to the most of us, and why are we so accepting of it, and seeming to want more? Will the line be drawn at the ballot box, or with armed action by the common man?
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....and, finally, if nothing else explains it, maybe this will:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=19
aceventura3, picture a funnel of money flow that begins with a wide mouth that sucks in all of the medical insurance premiums deducted from every worker's paycheck for the medicare portion of the FICA deduction, matched by an equal employer "contribution". It's comprised of 1.45 percent of earnings from each, or 2.90 percent total, of all W-2 earnings, wuth unlike the SSI joint deduction, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions_Act_tax">no limit</a>.
Here is a report on what the private sector has been doing to medicare:
Quote:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...12/MN63168.DTL
Medicare bilked for billions in bogus claims
Private watchdogs rife with conflicts make system an easy target for fraud
- Reynolds Holding, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 12, 2003
The system of private contractors policing the $250 billion-a-year Medicare program is riddled with conflicts of interest, financial disincentives and regulatory breakdowns so severe that fraud and abuse bleed tens of billions of dollars from the program every year.
Several of the most egregious frauds have involved the watchdogs themselves -- private insurance companies the government hires to examine and pay Medicare claims -- court records show.
But even reputable companies lack incentive to search for fraud. They serve at the behest of medical trade groups and, in some cases, are business partners with doctors and hospitals. They skimp on oversight, checking for the proper completion of claims forms but rarely for deceit.
The result is a variety of billing scams involving nonexistent patients, unnecessary treatments, phony tests, excessive charges, services never rendered or procedures billed more than once.
"It is utterly ridiculous," says Malcolm Sparrow, a health care fraud expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. "We are trusting insurance companies to do oversight of the medical profession, and they are riddled with corruption themselves."
Sparrow estimates Medicare fraud at $50 billion to $75 billion a year -- about twice the amount of Congress' most expensive proposal for helping senior citizens buy prescription drugs.
Fraud is so costly that it has helped force Medicare into drastic spending limits since 1997. Last year, the program cut doctors' reimbursement rates 5.4 percent, with an additional 12 percent reduction scheduled for the next three years. Lower rates have led many medical providers to drop Medicare patients, leaving millions of Americans without sufficient health care coverage.
The system's failures emerged with disturbing clarity Oct. 30, when FBI agents seized records involving two heart specialists suspected of billing Medicare for unnecessary procedures at Redding Medical Center.
Several days later, the medical center's owner, Tenet Healthcare Corp., announced that a private watchdog -- Mutual of Omaha -- had persuaded the federal Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the company for extracting billions of dollars in possible overcharges through a Medicare loophole.
No charges have been filed in either case.
But other Medicare scams are so brazen that critics say even cursory oversight would reveal wrongdoing.
From 1991 through 1997, Healthcare One, a medical equipment seller in Encinitas (San Diego County), persuaded more than 110 elderly cancer patients to order special pumps for draining excess lymph fluid. Though the pumps didn't meet federal standards, the company forged doctors' letters to certify that the patients could not survive without them.
Failing to check the paperwork, the Medicare watchdog reimbursed the company $5,400 for each pump, a total of more than $500,000 in public funds for bogus medical equipment.
"They jeopardized patients' lives in the name of the almighty buck," says Ray Pettersen, Healthcare One's former national sales manager. "And they weren't ripping off the government, but you and me and every other taxpayer."
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Medicare's persistent breakdowns derive in part from its size. The program, created in 1965 to guarantee health care coverage for Americans over 65 or with certain disabilities, covered more than 40 million Americans last year and paid about a billion claims.
But critics say the system's fraud problems stem from a compromise Congress struck with the health care establishment 38 years ago. Fearing socialized medicine, doctors and hospital owners agreed to participate in the program only after being allowed to select the insurance companies that process the claims and serve as the program's watchdogs.
Today, 49 private insurance companies work for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that runs Medicare.
The insurance companies receive bills from doctors and hospitals that treat Medicare patients, examine the bills for mistakes and then pay them with checks drawn on two federal trust funds. The trust funds are financed through payroll taxes, patient premiums and general tax revenues.
The government reimburses the companies for their costs of processing claims, and grants them a fixed budget for administrative tasks such as controlling fraud and abuse.
Typically, the U.S. government awards contracts through competitive bidding.
But the compromise with Congress allowed the American Hospital Association, an advocacy group for hospitals, to decide which insurance companies should handle hospitals' Medicare bills.
Virtually all the companies turned out to be members of the National Association of Blue Shield Plans, now the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, a frequent political ally of the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association.
"'No sooner had the ink dried on that compromise than we began . . . to have horror stories," says Richard Kusserow, inspector general in the Department of Health and Human Services from 1982-1991. For every abuse the government tried to stop, says Kusserow, three would appear in its place.
Bilking Medicare became so lucrative that professional criminals got involved. In 1993, Gabriel Hernandez, a former "logistics coordinator" for the Medellin, Colombia, cocaine cartel, opened a chain of Florida health clinics that billed Medicare and state Medicaid programs for fictitious patients with phony ailments. Over two years, he received checks for more than $1.7 million.
"Everything was easy compared with being in the trafficking business," he says. "All I was doing was picking up checks every week. And I got caught, but I didn't get killed."
Hernandez was convicted in April 1997 of racketeering and spent five years in prison.
Three years ago, the General Accounting Office (GAO) cited "fundamental" conflicts of interest as a factor in the watchdogs' poor performance.
Hospitals and doctors not only help select their overseers, they go into business with them. Many of these companies also run health maintenance organizations. The HMOs funnel business to hospitals and doctors that the insurers may regulate.
Some of the companies even own hospitals. For example, one subsidiary of Cigna Corp. reviews and pays Medicare claims for doctors. Another subsidiary owns Lovelace Health Systems, a hospital and physician group in Albuquerque, N. M. Last month,. Lovelace agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a whistle- blower suit charging that the company had submitted tens of millions of dollars in false claims to Medicare over 10 years. Cigna did not review the Lovelace claims.
And when a private insurer and Medicare cover the same patient, the insurer is primarily responsible for paying the patient's claims, with Medicare picking up anything left over. But some insurers exploit their Medicare roles by making Medicare the primary payer, a violation that has cost the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Transamerica, Travelers and other insurers more than $100 million in legal settlements.
"Government contractors policing themselves," says Kusserow, "is not a very healthy situation to have."
CORPORATE ABUSE OF SYSTEM.....(read on...if it doesn't make you queasy !)
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<b>ace....take a look at what happens to the rest of the money that enters the wide end of the funnel.....all of the medical insurance premiums paid to the "for profit" insurance "providers". How much of insureds' premium payments do you think is spent on IPO's, mergers and acquisitions lawyers, bankers, and advisors, secondary stock offerings, bond issuance, on investor relations, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, tax accountants, determination and disbursement of dividends, and on issuance of stock options to executives that are dilutive to common stock holders?
How much of the premium payments is spent on advertising, marketing, sales, entertaining clients and prospective clients....the decision makers in the HR depts. at large employers who select the health plans offered to employees. How much is spent negotiating medical procedure payment rates with large hospital corporations like....HCA?
How much is spent paying interest on corporate borrowing, on dividends, on executive salaries, and how much ends up as net earnings available to common stock (total number of common shares divided by net earnings total= EPS)....???
Let's take a peek, shall we ???:</b>
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Aetna Inc. (AET)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AET
KEY EXECUTIVES
Pay Exercised
Mr. Ronald A. Williams , 57
Chairman, Chief Exec. Officer, Pres, Chairman of Exec. Committee and Member of Investment & Fin. Committee $ 2.70M $ 24.00M
Mr. Alan M. Bennett , 56
Chief Financial Officer and Sr. VP $ 1.09M $ 7.54M
Mr. Timothy A. Holt , 53
Chief Investment Officer, Chief Enterprise Risk Officer and Sr. VP $ 928.00K $ 13.92M
Mr. Craig R. Callen , 51
Sr. VP - Strategic Planning and Bus. Devel. $ 1.14M $ 0
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AET
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 1.73B
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<b>Aetna managed to dilute it's shareholder holdings by issuing stock options worth over $45 million to just three top executives in just one year, and earned $1.73 billion...which is the difference between premiums collected minus premiums paid, total expenses, and taxes paid, plus a contribution to a premium reserve.</b>
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Unitedhealth Group, Inc. (UNH)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=UNH
Income Statement
Net Income Avl to Common (ttm): 3.96B
Balance Sheet
Total Cash (mrq): 9.92B
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=UNH
KEY EXECUTIVES
Pay Exercised
Mr. Stephen J. Hemsley , 54
Chief Exec. Officer, Pres, Chief Operating Officer and Exec. Director $ 3.45M $ 0
Dr. William W. McGuire M.D., 58
Former Chief Exec. Officer and Chairman of Exec. Committee $ 8.01M $ 0
Mr. Richard H. Anderson , 52
Pres of New Commercial Services Group $ 1.20M $ 0
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Here is the "story" of the experience of HCA, a company started by former senate majority leader, Bill Frist's (R-TN) father, and managed by his brother. After spending some time ago, whatever it cost for an IPO to take the company "public", now they've spent another slug of money on investment banking fees, financial advisors, and lawyers, to take the company private again, in a merger transaction.....The Frist family's holdings are reported here:
Quote:
http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/060810/323/gj6je.html
Thursday August 10, 05:13 PM
<b>Shareholders to vote on HCA deal</b><
.... The next day, the offer was upped to $50.50 per share, which the special committee also rejected, but said it would consider a proposal at $52 per share, it said.
Later that day, Merrill Lynch representatives contacted the special committee and said the potential buyers would submit their 'best and final' offer of $50.75 per share. The special committee said it would only pursue a proposal at $51 per share, which buyers finally agreed to, it said.
The SEC filing also contained details of the expected buyout of shares.
<b>It said that Thomas Frist Jr., who co-founded the hospital chain in 1968 with his physician-father, would put nearly 16 million shares of HCA stock back into the company.
Frist owns about 4 percent of HCA shares, but after the pending buyout he would own about 15 percent of the company.
Thomas Frist Jr. is the brother of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is under federal investigation for selling HCA shares last year around the time insiders were selling and when the stock price hit a 52-week high.</b>
At least six members of HCA's senior management would invest a total of at least $46.5 million in cash or roll over a portion of their stock options into the deal, according to the SEC filing.
Of these executives, Chairman and Chief Executive Jack Bovender Jr., would put up the most -- about $20 million -- giving him 0.47 percent ownership of HCA after the buyout.
Richard M. Bracken, HCA's president and chief operating officer, would invest at least $10 million, for a 0.23 percent stake.....
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Quote:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....l-fundsnapshot
HCA owns and operates approximately 179 hospitals and approximately 104 freestanding surgery centers in 21 states, England and Switzerland. We are dedicated to providing healthcare services that meet each community's local healthcare needs. We seek to integrate various services to deliver patient care with maximum quality and efficiency. Our approach includes focusing on quality; streamlining operations; sharing technology, equipment and personnel where appropriate; and using economies of scale when contracting for medical supplies and administrative services.
11/16/06
HCA Shareholders Approve Merger With Private Equity Consortium632
Income From Total Operations (mil) (FYE) 1,424.00
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Quote:
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs....334/1003/RSS03
Monday, 01/08/07
Firms cash in on merger mania
Midstate bankers, lawyers, accountants collect hefty fees
By GETAHN WARD
Staff Writer
....The biggest was the purchase of hospital chain HCA by three private equity firms and the Frist family for $33 billion, the second largest leveraged buyout in history.
Beneficiaries included the law firm Bass, Berry & Sims of Nashville, which offered HCA legal advice and had a share in an estimated $62 million of legal and consulting fees.
"We did several billion dollar-plus deals (nationwide). That's very unusual," said Jim Cheek, a senior partner in Bass, Berry & Sims. "The amount of private equity money and the ability to leverage that money with significant debt-financing have been unparalleled."
In such transactions, lawyers and other professionals play various roles. Lawyers help with negotiating terms, reviewing contracts, advising directors and preparing regulatory filings.
Investment bankers help in structuring the transactions, including determining the appropriate price and arranging funding sources.
Accountants help to verify that financial information provided by a seller to a buyer is accurate, offer tax advice on structuring the transaction, and might help a party with negotiations.
In Nashville, fees lawyers can earn for work on such transactions range from $135-$140 an hour for younger attorneys up to $400-$500 an hour for senior partners. New lawyers in larger cities such as New York, Chicago and Atlanta can earn $200 an hour and senior partners $600 to $650 an hour, said George Bishop, a partner in corporate mergers and acquisitions with the law firm Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis.
A big deal doesn't always mean more work, he said, adding that parties might not have the time to review every contract and that much information might already be available.
Nationwide, cash-flush private equity firms — with an ability to put down so little of their own money and borrow more than ever before — are a major force behind the mergers and acquisitions boom that kicked off in 2003.
But a Bloomberg analysis of last year's 246 Tennessee deals shows that only 29 involved such equity firms,with a total acquisition value of more than $36 billion. Most deals were acqui sitions of companies by another player in their industries, including foreign companies involved in 37 deals worth more than $3 billion.
Health-care and pharmaceutical companies accounted for 47 deals worth $83 billion, making Nashville's signature industry the most active sector in terms of total dollar volume.....
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<b>It seems to me that Mr. Bush represents only the few folks at the bottom "narrow end" end of the private health insurance and private health care provider industry....the end where the money all flows back out....and into the pockets of executives, major investors, M&A advisors and investment bankers, lawyers and accountants, ad agencies and a whole bunch of other "feeders" off this industry who add nothing to insureds' paid premium "value". In their spare time, these greedy, selfish, unethical parasites, along with some doctors and other healthcare providers, also rip off the medicare insurance trust, fix prices, and engage in phantom fraudulant billing, and they get to write checks from our medicare trust fund...to themselves.
But your convinced that the "private sector" does it better than government, even though 45 million are now uninsured, and Bush's "solution: is to tax the benefits received by employees, and take care of his politcal patrons at the narrow end of this upside down pyramid scheme.
Don't ever forget, the "liberals" are socialists, and the republicans are your friends !
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When the bottom 50 percent in the US finally rise up and slit the throats of some of the folks described in the preceding quote box, the sabotuers of medicare and the "churners" who earn fees by taking helath insurers "private", after taking them "public", earning huge fees for themselves and stock options or golden parachute "triggers" for the insurance executives, maybe the knife wielding "rabble" will whisper this into their fucking ears:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
<h3>Life sucks sometimes. period.</h3>
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Last edited by host; 06-18-2007 at 08:26 PM..
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